Why Did 100 Apollo Go Robotaxis Freeze?
Plus, RIP Monarch Tractors
This is the Ride AI newsletter: The most comprehensive weekly digest of news and intelligence at the intersection of technology and transportation.
Your exclusive chance to ride the Wayve.
You’ve heard about it, now Ride AI attendees can try it. Wayve demo rides will only be available at Ride AI 2026. Experience the zero-shot wonder of Wayve in one of the toughest urban environments available on April 15th.
COO at Waabi, Founder and Chairman of Uber Freight, what hasn’t Lior Ron done? See Lior’s fireside chat with our very own Ed Niedermeyer at Ride AI. We only have 10 tickets left, so this is your last chance.
We still have exclusive Ride AI hotel rates at the Clift Royal Sonesta Hotel. Located in the heart of Union Square, it’s a chill Waymo ride away from SFJAZZ.
Use rate code PART to get 15% off your stay, valid for stays from April 12th to 17th.
Now, Here’s What You Need To Know Today.
Top Story
Over 100 Baidu Apollo Go robotaxis froze mid-route in Wuhan on the evening of March 31, stranding passengers on elevated highways and city thoroughfares, including the fast lane of the Third Ring Road. The cause, per Apollo Go customer service, was “network issues.” At least three separate collisions were reported on Douyin (Chinese TikTok) and Xiaohongshu (Chinese Twitter) as other drivers ran into the stopped vehicles. In-car SOS buttons were non-functional, calls were automatically disconnected, and customer service wait times stretched up to 1.5 hours. One representative told callers they “could only investigate issues if provided with a specific vehicle number” and denied any awareness of a broader outage. Police were called to help stranded passengers exit vehicles on foot.
This incident is reminiscent of Cruise’s network issue behavior. Cruise vehicles were programmed to perform a “safe stop-in-lane” maneuver when they lost connection with home base. However, Cruise never operated passenger service on highways, so when stop-in-lane maneuvers were performed, the stakes were relatively low. In the case of Apollo Go, many of the incidents took place on high speed roads and expressways.
Baidu has not released an official statement so we don’t know if that’s also what happened here, but Baidu has publicly embraced heavy networking on its fleets in the past. The timing is particularly rough. The company had been celebrating a new Dubai launch just hours before the Wuhan incident. More on the launch below.
Domestic News
Monarch Tractor is done. The once-hyped agtech startup raised $240 million promising autonomous electric farm tractors, burned through all of it, and has now vacated its Livermore, California headquarters. Multiple dealerships have filed suit alleging the tractors were sold with misleading claims about their autonomy. One dealer paid $773,088 for ten tractors that Monarch’s own sales team acknowledged in writing were unable to function autonomously indoors. A California winemaker who attempted to operate a Monarch tractor on his hilly farmland called it ”actually quite dangerous.” The company has laid off its entire workforce and may shut down entirely.
Waymo has confirmed it is preparing to launch passenger service in Tokyo through a partnership with Nihon Kotsu and GO, with Waymo Driver testing already underway in the city since April 2025. No launch date has been set, however as of press time it would be Japan’s first public autonomous taxi offering.
Tesla more than doubled its unsupervised robotaxi geofence in Austin, crossing the Colorado River for the first time and extending into downtown.
Waymo is now serving San Antonio International Airport, which would be its 4th airport.
Senator Ed Markey’s investigation into AV companies’ use of remote assistance operators is out, and the findings are not flattering. Markey sent inquiries to seven companies: Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox. Every single one refused to disclose how frequently their remote assistance operators intervene. Waymo is the only company in the group that employs overseas operators and the only one where a substantial share of those operators lack U.S. driver’s licenses. Latency thresholds vary widely, with each company setting its own standards and no industry baseline in place. Markey is now pushing NHTSA to investigate and is drafting legislation to establish standards around operator location, latency limits, qualifications, and reporting.
International News
Apollo Go launched fully driverless commercial robotaxi operations in Dubai on March 30, through an exclusive partnership with Dubai Taxi Company and a tie-up with Uber that lets users hail rides via the app at designated Jumeirah locations. The company now operates in 26 cities globally with over 20 million autonomous driving orders to date, including 3.4 million fully driverless rides in Q4 2025 alone, a more than 200% year-over-year increase. The Dubai launch came a day before the Wuhan outage that kicked off this newsletter, which is the kind of timing that makes PR teams sweat.
WeRide and Grab officially launched Singapore’s first autonomous* public ride service in Punggol on March 31. The service, called Ai.R (Autonomously Intelligent Ride), operates WeRide’s GXR and Robobus vehicles across two full autonomous shuttle routes plus a shorter mini route, weekdays from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM. The fleet already logged 1,000+ early riders and 30,000 km of autonomous mileage during a community engagement phase since January. Rides are free during the public trial; commercial service with introductory fares kicks off mid-2026. It should be noted that the service currently uses on-board safety drivers (hence the asterisk) and runs on fixed paths like a shuttle, so point to point service is not available. It is not yet known if the planned paid commercial service will continue using safety drivers or if it will enable point to point service.
Cool Projects
This DC Waymo dashboard tracks the estimated human cost of Washington D.C.’s delay in deploying autonomous vehicles. It applies peer-reviewed safety research to DC’s context and runs a live counter estimating preventable deaths since January 1, 2023, when DC missed its legally mandated AV safety study deadline. For reference: Los Angeles deployed within 12 months of testing, Austin in 15, Atlanta in 5. DC has now exceeded 24 months without commercial service.
Period is an autonomous parking model built in 36 hours at Comma Hack 6. 11 million parameters, runs on a MacBook, and can zero-shot parking a car in a previously unseen lot using only a front camera.
Making Moves
DoorDash Labs dropped a POV video of Dot, their autonomous delivery robot, navigating real streets, including bad (human) drivers. I just love seeing robots navigate human worlds.
Alright, that’s it from me… until next week. If you enjoy this newsletter, share it with your friend, colleague, or boss. Thank you for reading; Sophia out!